Friday, January 31, 2014

My spouse and I went to
California for a week in January, and got away from winter. Walking into the brilliant sunlight of Los
Angeles, I felt that I was on some gorgeous golden planet, far from
reality. After only a week, I forgot
winter; it seemed like some odd, improbable concept.

When it was time to fly back
to DC, we found out that National Airport had been closed all day because of
the snow. Our plane change was in Detroit,
where everyone but us deplaned in parkas and overcoats. When we were loaded onto our flight, the
pilot told us that if we couldn’t land in DC, well, we’d land someplace else.

We did land, hearing that we
were only the fourth flight to do so that day. Outside, the air was thick with snow, and our
cab ride home seemed interminable. The
Beltway was a long gray ribbon, with a few slow, half-blind cars bumbling along. Then we were dragging our suitcases through
the snow to the lighted front door, where my mother-in-law and
grandmother-in-law welcomed us home.

Since then, the song “California
Dreaming” hasn’t left my head (except for a very brief phase when it was
replaced by “Da Doo Run Run”). It’s snowed
again, gotten really cold, iced, gotten slightly warmer, melted some, and then
re-snowed. Icicles have dripped from the
roof onto the welcome mat, sending a mixed message. There are treacherous slats of ice on the
sidewalk, but it doesn’t much matter, because nobody wants to walk
anywhere.

Of course, it’s been dreary,
but not really abnormal for this semi-Southern, semi-Northern city. It’s my Southern friends who are really
confused, seeing snow as a rare creature that doesn’t usually visit their
neighborhoods. Like polar bears searching for their missing
ice floes, they’ve been flummoxed by the strange weather patterns.

And if I was in California,
if I was back there in the land of my pervasive inner pop tune, I would be
dealing with a historic level of drought.
Everywhere, the weather is pushing towards extremes beyond the human
comfort level. It’s ironic, in that it’s
been our own pursuit of comfort that has triggered the extremes we are
beginning to experience.

Jupiter is in Cancer, the
sign of comfort. Cancer is a sweet, nurturing,
childlike water sign that gives strong attachments to family, home, and neighborhood. It’s kind, sentimental, empathic, and not
particularly fond of the unfamiliar. But
Jupiter has been dealing with an opposition from Pluto, representing the forces
of transformation, and so this has not been a restful time. Everyone has been a bit tense lately.

Earlier in January, the chemical
spill affecting the water in West Virginia was an example of this aspect. Pluto deals with toxins, pressure, stress, anxieties,
and underlying cracks in the system. My healer
says that lots of people have been discovering boils, pimples and abscesses, examples
of hidden poisons coming to the surface.
And of course, another random shooting incident – this one a few days
ago at a mall in Columbia, Maryland – makes everyone feel more stressed, less
comfortable, less safe. While most of us
just bite our nails, some people deal with intense anxiety by shooting
strangers.

This Jupiter/Pluto opposition
continues through the first half of February, and it overlaps with the even
more volatile Jupiter/Uranus square, which goes into orb the first week of
February, and will hang around the rest of the winter. Uranus deals with sudden shocks, disruptions
and rebellions, and the Jupiter/Uranus square can signal an abundance of these. So Jupiter in Cancer is not going to spend
much time with its feet up, sipping hot cocoa before the fire this winter. There are wolves at the door. We will all be shaken
out of our comfort zones.

This may spell bad news for
the more toxic leaders of the world, as they try to hold on to power in the
face of the public will. This is
generally a losing battle, and even more so these days. But those who are addicted to money and power
are not going down without a fight.

And what about the Olympics? This is not the best time for them, especially
in such a war-torn region. But looking at the planetary patterns, I see a
very different kind of problem.

The day before the Olympics
are due to start, Mercury goes retrograde in Pisces, right next to Neptune, and
this is a particularly vague, confusing, disconnected influence. This doesn’t look like bombs and mayhem, but
rather like everybody wandering off in the wrong direction and never making it
to the finish line. There are quite a
lot of things that could go wrong, many of them having to do with mixed signals
and bad communication.

As we know, Sochi lies in the
warmest region in Russian, and there has actually been no snow there this
winter. Snow is there, however, well-guarded, kept in
snow vaults under thermal blankets, glued together with special snow salt. This sounds like a pretty vulnerable situation
when the eyes of the world are upon you, and when Mercury is retrograding in a
water sign. Is this alien snow really
going to work out? It sounds like the beginning
of a remake of the Blob.

Bad communication can also be
dangerous with the abundance of uniformed men and women who will be everywhere
in Sochi. They’ll be holding lethal
pieces of hardware while listening to garbled messages through their
ear-pieces. And there’s another
inhibiting influence a few days after the Olympics begin, the sun/Saturn square,
which tends to delay everything. With
all this, I’m beginning to wonder if the Olympics will even happen.

Whatever happens, Mercury will
look on laughing, in its trickster aspect.
And so some of the excitement generated by the rebellious Jupiter/Uranus
square will fizzle out, and some of the threats will fail without anyone ever
knowing about them. Some demonstrations
will be derailed because of poor planning, and some bomb-makers will take the
wrong bus and never make it to the target area.

And some people will just
have changes of heart. There will be those
who suddenly look at their guns and bombs, and don’t like what they see, and toss
them in the nearest dumpster. Some people,
saddened by all the wrong around them, will join together and protest more
peacefully. Many will recognize the
power and purity of non-violence.

Pisces is a strong spiritual
influence, and so some folks will start praying more, and some will have
powerful and beautiful visions. These
may be visions of connection, of oneness with other people and with the
earth. And sometimes these visions will
mean going backwards, making corrections, asking for forgiveness, and realigning
with the best in oneself.

And that’s not necessarily
comfortable either. But in the end, it
may be what saves us all.